


How the Other Half Lives

by quiet__tiger



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Bodyswap, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 19:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10703742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiet__tiger/pseuds/quiet__tiger
Summary: Jack and Ianto share a bodyswap. Ianto gets curious.





	How the Other Half Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal Aug. 31st, 2011.

Jack stretched his arms out, liking the way the suit fit around his body.

Well, Ianto’s arms and Ianto’s body.

Whatever.

The pronouns always got confusing or vague with bodyswapping. He should know. At least he hadn’t gotten swapped with a woman this time. And at least Ianto wasn’t pregnant.

Jack looked in the mirror once more, still surprised to see the young Welsh face looking back at him. Four days wasn’t long enough for the novelty to wear off. Not when his new body was this young and this handsome and this, well… _Ianto_.

He considered it a cosmic win that the device switched the bodies of the two people in front of it, not the person actually holding it. Being in Gwen’s tiny body and having to go home to Rhys really would have put a damper on Jack’s week. Not that Rhys wasn’t handsome, it was just that Rhys would panic and yell and it would all be very stressful. Swapping with Ianto was the easiest switch on the team, and it also meant they could still be intimate with each other as normal.

Well, not quite normal, but for a temporary thing, becoming each other wasn’t the oddest or least desirable way to add a kink to their bedroom/office/car park activities.

Was it a crime to get off on hearing yourself call out your own name?

Speaking of which, where was Ianto? Jack had gone to change after an impromptu quickie in the archives while Ianto said he was… Hmm. Since the swap Jack seemed to have trouble focusing on anything Ianto said. Hearing his own voice wasn’t the problem, but hearing it try to pronounce words with Ianto’s accent was a turn-on. He doubted the effect was the same the other way around; he could only imagine his inflections added an unpleasant sharpness to Ianto’s natural voice.

“Ianto!” It was such a fun name to yell in pleasure. Jack hoped to be doing so soon.

A quick tour of the main Hub failed to reveal his target, so Jack broadened his search and eventually came to the shooting range. Was Ianto getting in a little target practice before dinner? Maybe he was worried about having the same firearm ability in Jack’s body. Good old Ianto, always trying to improve himself and prove he was more than just Jack’s “part-time shag,” and if Jack could wring Owen’s scrawny neck he would.

Expecting to find Ianto fiddling with a weapon, as Jack’s body’s forehead creased between his eyebrows while Ianto frowned in concentration, he froze at what he actually saw.

His own body, with Ianto’s beautiful mind in it, limp on the floor.

Resting in a pool of blood.

That oozed from underneath his hair.

Or rather from a wound underneath his jaw. With another at the top of his head.

Not any wound.

A bullet hole.

A handgun lay next to the supine form.

Taking all this in in a fraction of a second, Jack lunged forward to his lover’s side. “ _Ianto_!”

It was hard like this, hard to cradle his own head and cry over it when it was Ianto he was worried about. Why would he do this? What would possess him to make him take his own life? Jack felt his—Ianto’s —young heart beat wildly in his chest, and looked around to make sure what had happened was self-inflicted after all.

He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary except for his own body splayed on the ground in a horrible scene out of a nightmare. Ianto was inside there, and now he was gone—unless Jack’s immortality was strictly confined to his body and not his essence. He hadn’t ever died while bodyswapped before.

“Come on, Ianto. Come back to me.” He had to. Jack couldn’t lose Ianto like this. Not to… what—Curiosity? Morbidity? Futility? Was Ianto really that unhappy with his life? Frustrated with the swap?

All Jack could do was kneel there on the cold floor and hold him, and pray he would gasp back to life.

He stroked his own hair and stared into his own eyes, hoping to see Ianto in them. Hoping the body he held would suddenly jerk and gasp and move again.

“Come on, Ianto.”

It was too long. It didn’t normally take this long to come back from a head wound. He’d had more than his fair share of lethal head trauma over the years, and it never took this long to come back to life.

“Come on…” What was there to do? There had been far too much violence in Jack’s long, interminable life. He brought it with him, shared it, transferred it, and here was the evidence—a young man was in Jack’s body for less than a week and had wanted it ended. “We could have found something, usually body swaps aren’t permanent, there were other pieces of tech in the box we haven’t gotten to categorize yet…”

Whatever was in him that made people crazy, it was truly within _him_ , making Ianto want to—

The body in his arms sudden came back to life with a pained gasp, eyes open and wild and unseeing. 

Jack’s hands gripped tightly as he yelled, “Ianto!”

Jack was clutched by his own hands, and did his best to ignore the howl coming out of his own mouth.

Finally those wild eyes focused on him. “Jack!”

“Ianto, I’m here, you had me worried but I’m here.” So worried he wasn’t quite at the point where he wanted to shake some sense into him.

“Jack, it was… How do you do this all the time?” Tears dripped from Ianto’s—Jack’s—eyes.

“Do what?”

“ _Die_. There was—There was nothing. Just dark and nothing.”

Jack kissed the widely open eyes staring up at him in fear. “I don’t have a choice. It’s part of who I am. But the darkness is horrible.” Jack could have gone on describing what it was like to die and resurrect, die and resurrect, but Ianto hadn’t really asked before now, and now he wasn’t exactly asking. Though now… “What the hell were you doing? It’s not a choice for me, but it certainly is for you!”

Through his pain and fear, Ianto managed to make Jack’s face look somewhat sheepish. Jack had no desire to ever see the expression on his own face again. “I wanted to know. What happened when we die.” Jack opened his mouth to say he’d told them all before, but Ianto cut him off. “I wanted to see if you were telling the truth, about there being nothing there. I realized this would be the closest I could come to being able to experience actual death but be able to come back from it.”

Angry with Ianto’s foolishness, Jack asked, “Did you like what you saw?”

As new tears squeezed from tightly shut eyelids, Ianto whispered, “No.”

Trying not to raise his voice, Jack continued, “I could have told you that you wouldn’t. I’d thought I’d made it pretty clear that there is _nothing_ after death. Blackness and _nothing_. …It’s something no one else should have to endure and remember by coming back from it.”

Holding Ianto closer, trying to ignore the drying blood caking his own hair, Jack continued, “And there’s no way to have known you’d actually come back. If the immortality is connected to my spirit, for lack of a better word, you wouldn’t have. I’d be immortal in your body. And you would be dead in mine.”

Looking into terrified blue eyes, it was clear Ianto hadn’t considered that possibility. “But you always come back.”

“And we’re lucky you did, too.” Angry as he was, Jack planted a fierce kiss on Ianto’s forehead. “But we are going through the rest of the box and finding the tool that will switch us back, because I don’t want any more crazy thoughts running through your—my—brain. I spread enough insanity as it is, and I don’t want you catching any more from me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know the history of Torchwood Three.” Jack wanted to leave it at that, but Ianto—clever, beautiful Ianto—wouldn’t let him.

“It’s the nature of the job, Jack, what we all see and do to protect Queen and country. And world.”

“It doesn’t have to be. The only constant throughout it all is me.”

Tears abated, Ianto cocked an eyebrow. “And aliens, and the Rift, and working underground at all hours of the day with little time off to spend with friends and family if you’re lucky enough to have them. Sometimes it gets to people. But it has nothing to do with you.”

“So long as it doesn’t keep rubbing off on you. Or getting inside you. We need to switch ourselves back.” The time for body swap fun had passed; the day had taken an unpleasant turn and Jack wanted to get away from it all. Both he and Ianto would feel better if they were back in their own skins.

“Let me change and I’ll help you look through the box. …I’m sorry I ruined your shirt.”

Before Ianto could sit up all the way, Jack tipped his head back to press his lips against the healed underside of his chin, then tilted his head forward to do the same where the healed exit wound was. He held him close as he whispered, “Never again. What happened to me is a _curse_ , not a blessing. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Especially not you.”

Ianto nodded against him, and Jack could only hope he’d made himself clear. He wished he was in his own body so the message wouldn’t be delivered from such a distracting source, but he had to assume Ianto understood.

There was nothing after death, and Jack got pulled away from it unnaturally and horribly over and over and over again. And still his advice wasn’t always taken, his expertise ignored.

Something about death was just so fascinating to humanity.

~*~

Jack and Ianto held onto each other for another few minutes, the former glad his lover had returned, the latter glad he’d only have to endure death one more time, where it would be permanent.  
Though Ianto couldn’t help but feel he understood Jack better, had gotten a glimpse into his psyche.

Jack could be infuriating with his attitude, entitlement, and secrets, and perhaps now Ianto could grant him more slack about it, the way they’d all had to learn to do so.

Sometimes curiosity was better left unsatisfied.

The new nightmares he’d have were certainly not worth having his questions answered.


End file.
